Factors In Favor Of Selenium As A Test Automation Tool

By Author: Michael Wade
Total Articles: 67
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Selenium comes with many resourceful features that can be implemented for Compatibility testing and Functionality testing. Selenium based test automation is a strong tool when compared to the other automation testing tools. Also, it is very simple and flexible.

As a lucrative strategy, organizations consider automated testing with an inclination towards open source automated testing tools rather than the expensive ones. Selenium is a very convenient open source testing tool that does not require licensing and comes with significant features that enables the automation testing of web portals and software applications. Selenium Automation Testing is now the most preferred choice for automation testing of web applications.

Let us check out the key reasons for choosing Selenium as a UI testing tool based on the real experiences of software projects.

- Automated Checks: The Web Driver object helps to trigger real events in the browser. They can be mouse clicks, button clicks, keyboard events, etc. Selenium is mainly preferred in order to drive a set ...
... of commands and check the status. This includes data shown in the screen as per login status, procedural aspects, etc. A WebDriver basically helps to perform checks which can normally be answered with a simple yes/no. Once the checks are built, they can be used multiple times as a tool to discover problems.

- Repetitive and long running tasks are expensive in terms of time and money. Eventually, testers lose their focus over time, which leads to mistakes. But automated scripts do not make mistakes. Selenium Testing Services help in creating scripts and virtual users for carrying out these tasks in a realistic way.

- A fair comparison between Selenium and the other tools available in the market can help in understanding why Selenium is the most preferred one. Some of the factors contributing to this are:

o Browser Support: With the W3C WebDriver specification being finalized, testers will not have to worry about browser upgrades.
o A wide community support: Selenium being an open source software, all changes happen through community involvement. Hence, for maintenance issues and support tickets, forums and developers can be approached.
o Features: Selenium features are developed as per needs. New features of Selenium can be seen in the code repository. If the feature request is not fast enough, one can always write the code and initiate a pull request for oneself.

- Most of the time the decision to use Selenium comes from the upper management, as they have their well researched facts. Understanding these facts and analysis can help set up reasonable expectations and work towards achieving them.

More reasons for preferring Selenium
- As compared to other automation tools, Selenium has the capability to work in almost every Operating System.

- It supports multiple languages such as Python, Pearl, PHP, .NET, Java and C#. Knowing even one language is enough to work with Selenium. Also, the language used to build the program is independent of the language used to build the web application. Hence the test scripts can be built in any of the languages supported by Selenium.

- Different kinds of Frameworks such as Object Oriented, Keyword Driven, Data Driven and Hybrid can be very conveniently implemented with Selenium.

- With Selenium it is possible to execute simultaneous tests on various browsers on different machines. This eventually reduces the time for test execution when working on a large project.

Conclusion
Along with the parallel testing capability, programming languages and browser support, the zero investment factor with the benefits of an open source community support makes Selenium Automation Tool a preferred choice.